Ecumenical Patriarch Meets With US Ambassador in Athens Visit (video)

US Ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt met with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Athens on Friday to discuss the Patriarch’s upcoming visit to Washington in the autumn of 2019.

“This will be the first visit of the Ecumenical Patriarch to the US in a decade, and it is taking place at a very important moment for the Church of America as there will already be a new Archbishop,” Pyatt said. Elpidophoros was recently elected as the new Archbishop of America.

The ambassador said they were also able to talk about “the critically important role that the Ecumenical Patriarch plays as a religious leader on a variety of other issues, in the Middle East, of course in the Ukraine where the voice of his All-Holiness is so important, and across the wider Orthodox world.”

Pyatt stated on his Twitter account that he was “grateful as always to meet His All-Holiness and to express the strong US support for his efforts on religious freedom, the Ukrainian autocephaly and new US Archbishop Elpidophoros.”